Go Farther: The SocialBox

SocialBox

So Google's Hangouts may be a killer app: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/is-googles-hangouts-its-killer-app/.  The article – and indeed Hangouts itself – emphasize what people want in social tech: immediate, human connectivity.

This got me thinking, which is not unusual.  Hangouts, Skype, Facebook chat, all point me towards what I believe could be the future social "killer app;" indeed a service so needed I expect multiple companies to try and make it.  I'll call it The SocialBox.

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Geeks May Save Wal-Mart

Geeks may just save Wal-Mart. Gods, I don't believe I'm saying this.

I'll get it out of the way, I'm not exactly a fan of Wal-Mart. It's a combination of business factors, quality, effects on community and so on. You know, the usual.  I'm not exactly going to diss success, but I think Wal-Mart's been on a kind of a race to the bottom.

In fact, it looks like that bottom is being reached pretty fast, as this article notes:  Wal-Mart shoppers are running out of money:  http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/27/news/companies/walmart_ceo_consumers_under_pressure/index.htm

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Media Mutation

I noted a few posts back that many industries, geeky industries, are in transition – or should be.  I noted that movie theaters face many challenges, and perhaps even the and of what it means to be a movie theater, or its expansion into something else. I noted publishing is changing. Many, many industries and businesses are in transition, and those in them need to keep up or the changes may well crush them.

So, yes it's important to realize that businesses are changing in this bizarre, wonderful age of technical and media mutation. Yet, if you think about it, media itself is changing. Why should we expect the media to stay the same after all -  it relies on technology which is ever-changing, so it's going to change and morph and modify itself.

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